Planar Cube Draft, July 21–August 8

If you'd like to skip the introduction, you can skip ahead to core cards, the current planar module, or the design process. If you're joining us after Planar Cube has planeswalked, you can also skip ahead to the revealed planar modules.

Table of Contents

• What Is Planar Cube?
• How to Draft Planar Cube
• Planar Core Cards
• Planar Module Contents
• Week One: Zendikar
• Week Two: Innistrad
• Week Three: Kamigawa
• How Did We Get Here?

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What Is Planar Cube?

Cube is like Booster Draft but pulls cards from across Magic's history. There are all sorts of permutations of cubes, from high-powered to rarity-restricted, special rules to color-restricted, and many, many more flavors.

Planar Cube is novel in that it planeswalks every week. Each Tuesday, we'll visit a new plane, and the majority of the cube will rotate, pulling cards in from across all of Magic to celebrate the themes, mechanics, and aesthetics of the host plane.

Planar Cube has two components

• The 200-card planar core: This doesn't change from week to week. Expect lands, removal, staple effects, and cards which will play well and differently on different planes.
• A 360-card planar module that rotates: This contains many of the most impactful cards, both from a power-level and thematic perspective. Many of the cards will be from the host plane, but many more will be from other parts of Magic—from Magic Multiverse sets to Universes Beyond sets. But all of them will support the host plane's mechanics and themes. For our inaugural Planar Cube, we're testing a rule: if a card appears in one planar module, it does not appear in any of the others—it's only around for one week. You can expect the cube to feel very different each week.

Planar Cube is …

1. Fluctuating: Because Planar Cube changes so drastically, you should expect a different experience each week. The cards are strong, but which cards you'll use and how you'll use them will change.
2. Strong: Planar Cube uses many of the most powerful and iconic cards from across MTG Arena, so expect something higher octane than normal drafts. It's strong, but it's not power-full like Arena Powered Cube, so expect a different texture to the experience.
3. Mostly Singleton: Each iteration of Planar Cube contains 560 cards with a handful of duplicates.
4. Phantom: In tabletop, a cube is lent out to players who return the cards at the end of the draft, and the same is true here. Cards drafted are not added to a player's collection.

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How to Draft Planar Cube

While some people have been playing Cube for decades, Planar Cube will be an introduction to the format for others. And there haven't been any cubes on MTG Arena like Planar Cube. So, we want to give you a brief guide before you jump into the deep end.

Cube exists somewhere between Booster Draft and Constructed. Like in a normal draft, you want to draft intrinsically powerful cards that demand an answer from your opponent and cards that will answer your opponents' cards. As in Constructed, everyone has access to plenty of strong cards, so you need to find ways to make your deck outperform theirs—such as utilizing synergies to make your cards more than the sum of their parts or drafting a strong mana base to keep you from stumbling.

The 200-card core of Planar Cube contains plenty of great ways to maximize your mana and answer your opponents' threats but few ways to win the game. You'll rely on the cards connected to the home plane for power and synergy, and each plane works differently.

In general, you can expect to see certain staple archetypes:

1. Aggro: Pick a base color—often but not always red or white—and draft a lot of cheap creatures and removal.
   
2. Midrange: Draft a mixture of cheap disruption and threats in the two- to four-mana range so you can stymie aggro decks and pressure slower decks.
   
3. Control: This is often centered in blue or black. Remove all your opponents' threats and win the long game with one big finisher or by drawing more cards than your opponent.
4. Ramp: This is primary in green. Generate extra mana in the early turns and play bigger spells faster than your opponents can.
5. Multicolor good stuff: Prioritize mana fixing early, play three or more colors, and wield every effect and archetype in the cube … if your mana can handle it.

These are the broadest archetypes. Each plane offers its own texture of gameplay, such as how the Zendikar version of the cube includes three copies of Misty Rainforest to make cards like Hydroponics Architect, Tireless Tracker, Treasure Cruise, and Mystic Sanctuary even stronger.

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Planar Core Cards

The core of Planar Cube contains 200 cards that remain the same as the cube planeswalks and rotates. It has powerful cards—especially for mana fixing and removal—but fewer cards that will win the game outright. Many of its cards are selected because they play well and differently on different planes, but you'll have to figure out those synergies on your own.

Select a symbol to see card lists.

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Planar Module Contents

Each week, Planar Cube will rotate and planeswalk to a new plane in the Magic Multiverse. The planar core stays the same, but the 360-card planar module will change. You can see the contents of the revealed planar modules and discussion of their identities below!

Week One: Zendikar
(July 21–27)

Welcome to Zendikar, a world of adventure, landfall, and most importantly, fetch lands. While Zendikar is the host plane, there are three copies of each fetch land and an abundance of mana fixing. Build an ambitious mana base, fill the stack with landfall triggers, and have access to some of the strongest low-cost, assertive cards from across the Multiverse. If you enjoyed the last few versions of Arena Cube, you'll enjoy your stay on Zendikar. During your stay, you might also see some additional copies of Thought-Knot Seer and Risen Reef, but that's probably nothing … right?

Select a symbol to see card lists.

Week Two: Innistrad
(July 28–August 3)

We'll reveal the contents of the Innistrad planar module on July 27. Stay tuned!

Week Three: Kamigawa
(August 4–10)

We'll reveal the contents of the Kamigawa planar module on August 3. Stay tuned!

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How Did We Get Here?

Back when we were scheduling events for the Secrets of Strixhaven season, we planned to bring back Arena Cube. We haven't run it in over a year, and after running Arena Powered Cube for four sets, we were excited to offer players a different experience. But what is Arena Cube in a world with Arena Powered Cube?

Before Arena Powered Cube, Arena Cube was the cube with MTG Arena's most powerful cards and gameplay. When we knew Arena Powered Cube was coming and saw that certain power outliers (Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer; Mana Drain; Oko, Thief of Crowns) would be better fits there, we started to dial the power level down slightly and experimented with breaking Singleton for lands (much like we do in Zendikar Planar Cube). But now that Arena Powered Cube is out, that identity is muddied. While we expect many players would be delighted by a high-power environment (but not as high as Arena Powered Cube) that uses all cards on MTG Arena (while Arena Powered Cube's singular digital-only card is Oracle of the Alpha), we wanted to craft a clearer identity—both for us to design the cube and for players to understand it.

The plan was to run Arena Cube during the Secrets of Strixhaven season with a moderate Strixhaven theme. We would include the paradigm spells from Secrets of Strixhaven, break Singleton for cards with learn from Strixhaven: School of Mages to find them, and include a bunch of Lessons from Magic: The Gathering® | Avatar: The Last Airbender™ to support that theme. We added several Dragons from Strixhaven: School of Mages and Secrets of Strixhaven as finishers, along with some other thematic inclusions and … the experience just didn't come together. With this much Singleton-breaking in service of the learn mechanic (which increases consistency), the experience was starting to feel too repetitive and needed a total rework. But it planted the seed of an idea. What if we made a cube inspired by a plane and embraced that plane's mechanics and themes?

We'd already played in this space a little. The version of Arena Cube from last summer wasn't a Zendikar-themed cube, but by breaking Singleton for fetch lands, we made Zendikar's core mechanic, landfall, much more powerful. What if we leaned into that and just went to Zendikar? Well, there was no reason to go to Zendikar in particular—Secrets of Strixhaven was set on Arcavios. But what if we could go to more than one place? That's the theme we landed on for the cube. Now, we weren't designing a new flavor of Arena Cube. We were designing something entirely new. A planeswalking cube.

This led to the concept of the planar core and planar modules. That way, something would stay the same between planes and something would rotate. We'd start in Zendikar, as it was a semi-known space for enfranchised cube drafters on MTG Arena. We'd then move to one of Magic's most beloved planes, Innistrad, and commit harder to mechanics and specific archetypes than ever before. Finally, we'd finish with Kamigawa and try to exemplify some of the best and most iconic aspects of Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, which was an astounding Limited environment. It was big, bold, and ambitious … and now completely out of scope for the Secrets of Strixhaven season. Instead of iterating on an established and beloved cube, we were now essentially building three brand-new cubes, each of which would need their own artwork, text, design, and refinement. And we were behind schedule after scrapping our initial plans. So, we pivoted. We instead took a big swing with a different version of Arena Powered Cube during that season and delayed Planar Cube in the hope that it would be ready for Magic: The Gathering® | Marvel Super Heroes.

Playtesting made a few things very clear, very quickly:

• This is new. Even with me running the playtest and communicating the concept, it was a lot for players to absorb because no one had ever played something like this.
• The planar core needed to be smaller and less powerful. Originally, the core made up 40% to 60% of the cube and our prototype planar modules were different sizes. This washed out too much of the texture of the host plane, and we saw finishers in the planar core consistently win games, removing the differences between the planes. We wanted more differentiation from week to week.
• This is fun. This might go without saying, but we wanted to make sure each plane had its own kernels of fun for players to hook onto, that those kernels were different from each other, and that different player types could enjoy each experience.

And that's how it happened. We had something cool, new, and ambitious to share with players. It received a massive iteration as we expanded the planar modules to 360 cards and shrank the planar core down to 180 cards. We then bumped the core up to 200 cards without dropping the planar modules down to 340 cards, accidentally making the cube slightly larger than we'd intended … but it played well and we kept it.

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We hope you enjoy your trip to all three planes and across the Multiverse in this maiden voyage of Planar Cube. We look forward to hearing all about your experiences and making cool things for you to play. I also want to give a very special thank you message to Dan Schneider. Dan is one of the most brilliant minds in the cube design scene, and he inspired and enabled this project. Finally, and as always, I can't wait to see you in the queues. I'll be there each week.